The black hole brings new measures

It might be that the tax storm of the implementation law has passed; dark clouds, though, are still lingering overhead.

It seems that it will be very difficult to collect the 4,5bil euros of the black hole in the first 6 months of this year, especially with questionable additional measures of 7,5bil announced by the government and voted on in parliament last month.

The finance ministry staff already see that even if the monthly increase rate of the black hole slows down in the second half of the year, it will exceed 1bil (from a shortfall of 3,2bil in the five months of 2011, we went to over 4,5 in June). They also fear that even if reduced by half (500-600mil per month), the existing 4,5bil gap will receive at least 3,5 more. This amount cannot be covered even if the additional measures planned by the data that existed in mid-June prove to be 100% effective.

But even if the shortfall at the end of the year is marginal, the economy team is already searching for new measures that will replace some "hard" and "unreasonable" ones, as many of them were characterised by its members.

The 23% VAT tax in restaurants and the decrease of the tax-free limit that burdens especially people with kids, are among them.

In this sense, those who were excluded from last year's completion (homeowners and businesses with high turnover) were used as a "cushion" and are now asked to pay about 1bil euros to summarily close their books.